Project Summary
Countries: Ukraine, Belarus. Additional samples collected from: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia and Moldova
Delivery Partner: World Forest ID (WFID)
Project Partner: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Principal Investigators: Emily Crumley: World Forest ID (WFID); Marigold Norman: World Forest ID (WFID)
Contact: Emily Crumley: emily.crumley@worldforestid.org; Marigold Norman: marigold.norman@worldforestid.org
Challenge
In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the opportunity for Russia to finance the war or subsequent occupation through sales of timber, the Central and Eastern European Conflict Timber project seeks to build on existing voluntary measures, punitive tariffs and sanctions on the direct import of timber to make it harder for Russia to circumvent these measures. Specifically, this project is designed to support the widespread use of scientific testing techniques to scrutinize claims about the origin of timber from this region. Current reference libraries lack samples of key species which grow in Russia but also throughout Ukraine and neighbouring countries. This project therefore aims to build up a georeferenced database of timber samples so products in trade can be tested against this reference data to validate the species and location of harvest.
